


Indecision

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Series: Dyspraxic fics (stand-alone stories with a similar theme) [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Ableist Language, Banter, Dyspraxia, F/M, Learning Disabilities, M/M, Mental Health Issues, dyspraxic Jeremy Heere, dyspraxic author writes a dyspraxic character, fluff?, post squip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 21:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Jeremy has to decide whether or not to pursue extra help at school for his newly diagnosed dyspraxia.  He also needs to work through his feelings at having a learning disability for which 'bad at video games' is literally one of the diagnostic criteria.





	Indecision

Jeremy, Christine, and Michael are assembled in Michael’s basement. Jeremy’s on the bed, and Michael is parked with his ass on the floor, and his back against one of his bean bags. Christine is _not_ resting her head in Jeremy’s lap, thanks to the panicked squeak Jeremy let out when she tried it. Jeremy can't decide if he passed on the chance of a lifetime there, or saved himself from a very specific kind of mortification. At any rate, Christine’s settled for lying backwards on the bed, with her head and torso hanging off upside down, hair brushing the floor. Michael’s playlist is alternating between reggae, 90’s pop, and stuff in languages Jeremy doesn't know. Smoking a lot around Christine isn't cool, so potato chips are Michael’s vice for the afternoon. He found all these weird international flavors on the internet, like cucumber, wasabi, and spicy crawfish. 

“The crawfish are pretty good,” he reports. “But wasabi are the best. Cucumber tastes like sugar frosted tush.” 

“Gimme,” Christine says. “Crawfish, not cucumber.” She opens her mouth wide, and Michael tosses one at her, which she catches with a satisfying crunch. Michael throws another. This one misses, and hits Christine in the forehead. Jeremy turns over onto his stomach to get a better view of the action. Another two potato chips hit Christine in the forehead and the chin respectively. Another gets her in the mouth, but she spits it out, giggling. This is the girl that Jeremy was afraid to talk to for months! This is the deity he admired from afar! Funny, how when he was building her up into a super-human being, he never once realized how much fun she actually was. 

_Thwap!_

A full packet of chips hits Jeremy in the forehead. The sound that comes out of his mouth is something like ‘dyeah-aah’, a fact which he only knows because Michael imitates it, a big grin on his face. 

“Fuck you.” 

“Eat your chips.” 

Jeremy examines the bag. It's got something purple on the front— either blueberries or grapes. Either way, yuck. “I'm not eating fruit flavored chips.” 

“Your loss. Sit up.” 

Jeremy does, which means he's prepared to dive after the next bag Michael hurls his way. Still misses it, though. Of course. He has to crawl over the side of the bed to retrieve it. This one is BBQ flavor, which might not be half bad. 

“Heads up!” 

This time Jeremy comes close to catching Michael’s junk food missile, but he closes his hands too early, so the chips bump against his fist and fall to the mattress. Durian flavored. 

“Nice one,” Michael teases. 

“I'm shit at catching stuff, so sue me.” Jeremy flops back with an exaggerated huff. The headboard of the bed reverberates with it. Jeremy’s not all that bothered, but he's sure as hell going to make a show of being annoyed. He pops open the bag of BBQ chips. 

“Don't drop them all over my bed,” Michael warns. Looking him right in the eye, Jeremy takes a handful of chips, and shoves them in his mouth. They're okay. Not that weird after all, but not normal enough to be good. Jeremy hardcore identifies. He wipes his hands on his jeans.

For Jeremy, accidentally spilling a bunch of food all over Michael’s bed is not a far-fetched scenario. It's kinda his modus-operandi. These days, Jeremy’s got a whole lot of people trying to figure out what exactly is _wrong_ with him, and how to help. He's got a mile long list of diagnosed and semi-diagnosed issues. Dyspraxia’s like number three, after generalized anxiety, and all those weird specks of metal throughout Jeremy’s body, that show up on MRIs to baffle doctors. 

Like, as far as he can tell, the dyspraxia bit mostly means that his coordination and spatial awareness are off, but not off enough for most people to realize he's got a condition, and isn't just a mess for no reason. Rumor has it, the whole thing might also involve bonuses like fidgeting, or speech stuff, or massive disorganization, but Jeremy hasn't read up on it a lot, because it's hard for him to act naturally when he gets too self aware. At this point Michael probably knows more about the whole thing than Jeremy does. He's more into research. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Michael asks. 

“Potatoes.” Jeremy takes another handful of chips. 

“Six the Musical,” says Christine, launching into a rant about that. Normally Jeremy would be rapt with attention, but something is getting him stuck in his head. Maybe he should look more into the whole dyspraxia thing, but maybe not. Last time he did, it told him that dyspraxics were bad at video games, and the easy levels in Apocalypse of the Damned started getting harder out of no where, and Jeremy hadn't been able to figure out whether or not he'd always sucked, or if his skills got psychosomatically worse the minute he realized he wasn't supposed to have them. 

“Do I suck at video games?” Jeremy blurts out, as soon as there's a lull in the conversation. 

“Not as much as I do!” says Christine. 

“Most people look bad at gaming next to me,” says Michael. 

“Right, but do I suck at video games?” 

“We’ve beaten… oh, I'm gonna say a solid trillion. Opposite of sucking, pretty much.” 

“But that's only because we spend a lot of time doing them!” 

“Sometimes I suck at things,” says Christine, “but if I do them a lot I stop sucking. So even if you ever sucked at video games, you probably don't anymore.” 

“Oh.” Jeremy has to think about that for a minute. “That makes sense.” 

“The exception are those group work packets Mr. Amorosi gives us for Meteorology. The longer I spend on those, the worse I get at it.” 

Michael groans. “Had him for Astronomy. Zero out of ten. Worst teacher at the school.” 

“What about Mrs. MgGinnen?” 

“Second worst.” 

Jeremy is quiet as they speak. He can't exactly see the Squip, but the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up straight with the static in the air. He licks his lips, tries to focus on the the wetness of his tongue, or the chapped roughness of his mouth, from having repeated this gesture one too many times. A conversation runs through his mind. Jeremy moves on from licking to scraping his teeth. Christine and Michael keep talking. They've moved on from the topic video games now, but… 

“Life is not unlike a video game,” Jeremy announces. “To succeed, you need good hand eye coordination.” 

Michael stops what he's saying mid-word to blink at Jeremy. 

“…and a cheat code?” Jeremy finishes weakly. He pulls at the collar of his shirt. Is the room getting hotter? 

Michael clambers up onto the bed, and Christine sits upright. “That's not your idea,” Michael says. 

“What?” 

“Your voice got weird. Those words didn't come from you. Are you seeing it?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. 

“What's it saying to you? Where is it?” 

Christine puts her hand on Michael’s arm, giving him a _look_. 

“I… um. I’m not? Seeing it?”

Christine nods. Even without saying anything, Jeremy senses she understands more than Michael does.

“I think I need a minute. I'm going to—” Jeremy points at the door, and pushes himself up off the bed. Michael begins to do the same thing. “No, I mean I… n-need a second with my own voices… I mean voice! I need a second with my own thoughts.” Jeremy waves Michael off. 

He goes to Michael’s bathroom, and leans against the sink. He splashes water on his face. He looks in the mirror, and sees only himself. He waggles his eyebrows, and watches his reflection do the same. He forces a smile, a frown, and then another smile. He's alone. Thank goodness for small favors! Sometimes Jeremy spirals out of control, but he's not going to this time. He closes the toilet seat, and sits down on it. Something set him off, but what? The Squip is lurking as always, looking for the weak parts in the mental walls Jeremy has erected. Right now he's got a chance to fortify his defenses before things go too far. 

Jeremy closes his eyes, trying to replay the scene in Michael’s basement. Nothing bad there! Just friends, and food, and being shit at catching things. Dyspraxia thoughts, which have been looming in Jeremy’s mind, because there are talks at school about whether or not he needs an IEP, and if he should have a couple periods a week in the “resource room”, which is supposedly just like a study hall with extra help, but gets referred to as the “tard barn” around school, and _ugh_ …

It’ll be okay though. Jeremy’s got a day or two left to weigh in with what he wants for his academic future. It's not really supposed to be his choice, but when the guidance counselor brought it up for him on Monday his first response had been such a decided _no_ that his dad had been called in, and now his dad is saying he won't have to do anything he doesn't want to. 

It's just that, maybe Jeremy _does_ want to. He's spent all his life desperate for help, not so much because of the dyspraxia, which he's only learned about recently, but in general. Should he really turn down an offer? Accepting what boils down to extra tutoring is in every way, shape, and form a better idea than taking a pill to change his personality and behavior, so why was it so easy for him to impulse swallow a Squip, and so hard for him to decide whether or not to pursue this? 

At least Jeremy’s got his problem figured out, and the Squip hasn't shown up to gloat over his indecision. Baby steps. He's doing okay. 

Jeremy goes back to the sink. He repeats the ritual of splashing water and making weird faces at himself. He's got this. He can go back to Michael and Christine, and trust that Squip phrases aren't going to come falling out of his mouth. He's paying attention. He's indecisive, but grounded. 

“You good?” Michael asks, when Jeremy returns to the basement. 

“I'm in control of my own body and mind, and a master at handling shit.” 

“Hell yeah! You handle that shit!” Michael says with his mouth. With his face, he says that he's honestly kinda perplexed, but doesn't want to harsh Jeremy’s vibe. Jeremy sits down next to Christine, and asks her if she agrees with the critics saying that “Six” is England’s version of “Hamilton”. Things are fine. No disasters. When she finishes talking about that, Jeremy asks her what he's really been wanting to ask her for a while. 

“What's it like going down to the resource room?” Jeremy knows that Christine goes down there for her ADD. He's always had the sense that that's the kind of thing that one doesn't talk about, but in his experience Christine loves to talk about ADD stuff, so it can't hurt to ask. 

“You want a critical review?”

“I might need to start going, ‘cause of that thing I told you about, and I need to make up my mind whether or not I'm okay with that.” 

“It's not scary or anything. It just is.” 

“I didn't mean scary.” Jeremy rubs his hands together. How to put this? “Like, is it useful? Is it worth it?” 

Christine looks up at the ceiling, head cocked to the side as if she's considering. “Depends on the day.” 

“So no?” 

“Depends on the day.” 

“Yes?” 

“There are pros and cons. It's only a couple hours a week, and you can ask the teachers anything you want, so that's good. Takes a while to learn who to ask what, because they’re supposed to all be able to help with everything, but they don't all know about everything. Mrs. Coolie is killer at math, just really good at explaining it, y’know? She's the only person I've met who can explain it right, so I get her to teach me, then I teach Rich, and it's _working_. Mrs. Davis is the most patronizing person I've ever met. She, like, tries really hard to give me stickers.” 

“You should scam her for free stickers,” Michael suggests. “However many she's giving you, get her to give you more.” 

“A masterful plan! But it feels gross. I used to be supposed to go down at the end of each day, to have them sign my assignment planner, then I had to have my dads sign it. One time I forgot to ask my dads, so I signed my own name, and I got a detention for plagiarism, even though I'd signed my own name, not anyone else's. Not understanding what plagiarism is isn't a sign in their favor.” 

“Right,” says Jeremy. 

“Not all of them know stuff about specific learning disabilities. Kinda feel like they should be teaching me fun facts about ADD, but usually I'm the one keeping them up to speed. They keep me on task, though, and otherwise stay out of my hair, except for Mrs. Davis. I wouldn't recommend against it.” 

“So I should go?” 

“I'd like it if you did. Is that selfish? It's kinda selfish. I mean, I like the other kids there, but I _really_ like you, so…”  
Jeremy hardly hears the rest of the sentence, over the chorus of bells and angels singing about how Christine likes him. He already knew that, but it's still a big deal.

“Yup,” says Michael. “Think you just sold him on it.” 

Jeremy grabs his pillow, and lobs it at Michael. Predictably, it misses, but Christine grabs it and launches her own attack, consisting of a volley of firm pillow smacks to the head. All in all, it's hard for Jeremy to feel unhappy, watching his two favorite people engage in pillow warfare. Besides, Jeremy’s done well today. He's experienced some worry and uncertainty without letting the technology in his head run amuck. He's also made a decision. Michael was right about that much.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback? 
> 
> A couple things from my life I threw into this fic for fun and profit : 
> 
> 1\. Although I'm dyspraxic, and people who have that are supposedly bad at learning foreign languages, language learning is one of my main interests and (I'd like to think) talents. So I wanted to play around with Jeremy being really into, and good at, one of those things that lists would usually make out to be one of his problem areas. 
> 
> 2\. Unfortunately, the rude name for the resource room was something that went around my high school, back when I was going there. Fun times! 
> 
> 3\. There was definitely a teacher there who handed out massive amounts of lollipops for anything that looked like productivity. I hated her, but one of my best friends adored her and still keeps in touch, so different strokes. Changed to stickers for this fic, because I get the sense that public schools aren't that big on giving out candy these days. 
> 
> 4\. Also had a going to detention for plagiarizing my own signature incident. 
> 
> 5\. However, Jeremy (and Christine's) thoughts and ways of dealing with things are very different than mine, because they aren't me.


End file.
